


Breakable

by SeekingIdlewild



Series: Crossing Orbits [1]
Category: Stargate Universe
Genre: Internal Monologue, M/M, POV First Person, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-24
Updated: 2014-05-24
Packaged: 2018-01-26 07:16:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1679537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeekingIdlewild/pseuds/SeekingIdlewild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things were designed to be hit.  Young suspects that Rush's face is one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breakable

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet started out as a writing exercise and turned into something that I thought was worth sharing. [Potboy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Potboy/pseuds/Potboy) gets the blame for the fact that Col. Young has been monologuing in my head for the past two days. I'm sure she orchestrated it somehow.

Your face is like an open invitation for violence.  It reminds me of my sixth birthday, when I stood with a baseball bat in my hands and stared at a piñata suspended from a low-hanging branch in my backyard.  As Mom tied a blindfold over my eyes and spun me around three times, I visualized that piñata, so bright and tempting in my mind's eye, and thought, _it wants to be hit_.  _It's so pretty and fragile and it wouldn't hang there looking so appealing if it didn't_ want _to be hit._   And so I lifted the bat and took a swing. 

Now your mouth twitches into that bitter smirk, the one that says I just failed another one of your little tests, and all I see before my eyes is a garish papier-mâché structure, just begging for a good wallop.  And my hands curl into fists, aching for the pleasant weight of my first baseball bat, because your face, Rush?  It _wants_ to be hit.

I wonder if you can guess what's going on inside my head right now.  You probably think you can.  When you look at me, you probably see something primitive with no higher reasoning skills worth mentioning, poorly masked by a cracked veneer of civilization.  Maybe that's because you expect me to be as duplicitous as you are.  But let me tell you, there's no mask.  The calm is not a front and the violence is not animalistic.  I might be a puzzle to you, but all the broken pieces of my character still fit together to make a whole man.  You just don't know him.  You've never even tried to know him.

You're baiting me, now.  You're trying to prove a point to yourself, and goddamn it, you have the _worst_ timing.  I know exactly what you want and we're not doing this today.

Papier-mâché and brightly-colored streamers fluttering in the breeze on a hot summer day.  My small, six-year-old fingers curled around polished ash.  Over three decades later, I still know when I see something that was designed to be hit, just like I know I was designed to do the hitting.  But not today.  Not at this moment, when everything's going to shit _again_ and you're dancing between barely-contained panic and raw, angry amusement at the incompetence of every living creature in the universe, always excepting your smug self.

Oh, I know why you want it.  At least I can guess, because I know why _I_ want it.  The rush of anger, the release of tension, the sense of purpose, the indescribable relief of _doing_ something with my own two hands instead of always being the observer, always threatened by imminent destruction yet unable to meet it face-to-face.  I think of you on the floor, bloodied, panting, and fuck if that's not the only time I've ever seen you look remotely at peace.  And it's only there, collapsed amidst the rubble of another broken truce, that I catch a glimpse of the man you are capable of being to the people who have not earned your contempt.  And perhaps in those moments you see something unexpected in me, too, because those are the only times when you speak and I can _feel_ the honesty in your words.

 _Later_ , your eyes are telling me now from across the room. _Later,_ _when we survive this latest crisis, assuming you allow me to do what must be done and miraculously fail to be your customary obstructionist self, we are dealing with this._

I know you expect this clash of wills to end in a knock-down, drag-out brawl in some unfrequented corner of the ship sometime in the near future.  You think we've reached another impasse and that I'm going to try to punch my way through it.  I get that.  I do.  I even get why you're going to be the one to seek it out this time.  I get why you're going to try to provoke me.  And believe me, Rush, I am very, very tempted.  I want someone to blame, too.  But this time it's different.  This time there is no higher ground to claim.  This time there's nothing to prove and no one to punish. 

This is just the way we are.  We're revolving around a common center, crossing each other's orbits, becoming more erratic with every near-miss.  Someday we'll collide, and I don't know whether we'll completely destroy each other or create something new, but either way, I know this is not that day. 

Today we're going to save the ship and the crew _again_ , and then we are _not_ going to talk about it.  Because your face is pretty and fragile and frankly, I can't stand to look at it right now.  It reminds me of brightly colored bits of shredded papier-mâché strewn across my backyard, the casualties of a childish game.  Well, I stopped hitting things just because they were breakable a very long time ago.  So we're not going to have that little encounter you're planning.  We're going to take a rain check on that one.  You're going to fix the ship, and we're going to survive another day. 

And I'm going to keep my fists in my pockets.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are always appreciated! Also, come say hi to me on [tumblr](http://seekingidlewild.tumblr.com/).


End file.
